


Various Uses for Towels #3: Sliding Down Spontaneously-Forming Hills

by TheWordsmithy



Series: Various Uses for Towels [3]
Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWordsmithy/pseuds/TheWordsmithy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ford and Arthur visit a planet whose terrain is in the habit of spontaneously reforming itself into hilly mounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Various Uses for Towels #3: Sliding Down Spontaneously-Forming Hills

As Ford and Arthur trudged up the damp hill, Ford kept looking back at Arthur to make sure he still had the towel. He was fairly certain the Earthman wasn’t going to lose it. In fact, he wasn’t sure how Arthur would lose his towel. It is fairly easy to keep hold of a towel, especially when one is in no more dangerous an environment than that of the moist, soggy hills of Trallactar III, which was where they currently were. Ford just didn’t like the idea of him finally entrusting his own towel to Arthur and having the human lose it in some typical act of anxious stupidity.

Arthur, on the other hand, was following along, sometimes a bit distracted by the little piles of turf that occasionally clumped together apparently of their own will. The predominant terrain of Trallactar III is some damp, porous cross between moss and dirt, and it seems to have the ability to shift and form itself into small mounds. This seems to be entirely random, and no one knows how it works. There exists a small group of scientists who are furiously attempting to solve this mystery of the universe, though the rest of the scientific community tends to think that they are wasting their time.

Neither Arthur nor Ford were particularly interested in this mystery of the universe, though Arthur was reminded of it when, bemusedly staring at a mound that started to build itself a few yards away to his right, he failed to notice and thus tripped over a mound that popped up right in front of him.

The thud of Arthur’s body on the ground combined with the “oof!” that he made upon contact caused Ford to turn around and say, “Do you need help?”

“No, I’ve just fallen because some mound of this whatever-it-is decided to materialize in front of me while rudely distracting me by getting me to look at a mound of the same,” Arthur said. “I’m quite alright.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“Yes. Yes, in fact, it was.” Arthur picked himself up from the ground. “You’re improving.”

“Good, then. Come along.”

They finally reached the top of the hill, with no further distractions from pieces of the planet’s surface set on interfering with their course.

“Now, you still have got the towel, yes?”

Arthur held it up triumphantly. “Yes.”

“Good.” Ford took it from him and laid it down on the flat expanse of hill. The two men sat down next to each other, not entirely certain as to what to do at this point. They had made it to the top of the hill; so what? Surely they had meant to do something when they got there, hadn’t they? Surely Ford’s plan in dragging Arthur up this somewhat capricious natural incline extended past the point they had now reached, didn’t it? Surely he meant for something to occur other than their acquisition of right to say, “Look, we climbed a hill on an alien planet, aren’t we fantastic”?

“What now?” Arthur said.

Ford shrugged slowly and sighed. It was the sort of sigh that gives the implication of a sentence directly following it but at the same time makes no promises.

“Well,” he said, leaning comfortably onto Arthur’s shoulder, “we –”

And at that moment, for no identifiable reason, another mound decided to rise up, but this time, it was directly beneath the spot upon which they were sitting, and this time, it wasn’t very small. It was like a miniature hill growing up beneath them. Arthur, startled, acted upon his first instinct of flailing in surprise and falling over. Ford, also startled, acted upon his first instinct of catching the falling human.

The towel was mildly useful here, as Ford, still seated upon it, slid down the new hill with the trusty hitchhiker’s tool as a sort of cloth toboggan. Granted, the actual need for a cloth toboggan was not entirely clear to either Ford or Arthur, and as Arthur, still in Ford’s arms, looked over at the thing down which they had slid, he said, “Did we just use a towel to slide down a spontaneously-occurring hill?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Like a…like a cloth toboggan?”

“That sounds about right.”

“Ah. I see.”

Arthur looked from the spontaneously-formed hill to Ford. He noticed he was in the Betelgeusian’s embrace, which loosened somewhat after Ford noticed that Arthur was noticing it.

“No, no, you don’t need to loosen your embrace just because I’ve noticed it,” Arthur said. “You can, in fact, tighten it, if you like.”

Ford, smiling, followed Arthur’s suggestion while adjusting the human’s position relative to his own body. Arthur was no longer in some sort of awkward ambiguously-upright sprawl along Ford’s legs. He was now being shifted to sit more definitely-upright in Ford’s lap, his head resting against the man’s shoulder. He wasn’t entirely certain where to put his own arms, so he slipped one around Ford’s waist and reached with the other for one of Ford’s hands, upon which he laid his own like an invitation for hand-holding. Ford accepted it.

“Did you plan this?” said Arthur, closing his eyes and relaxing into Ford’s body. “I mean, when we got here and you didn’t seem to have any idea as to what we’d be doing, was this the end result you had in mind?”

“No, not really.” Ford kissed the top of Arthur’s head and sighed, the corners of his mouth turning up in a little half-smile. “But, you know, I suppose this will do.”


End file.
